


TRENCH

by singing_to_empty_caves



Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Character Death, Delusions, Trench (Album), Violence, basically oc takes things way too far and then pays for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:05:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singing_to_empty_caves/pseuds/singing_to_empty_caves
Summary: Young and hungry, I wanted more. I wanted to know what it felt like to be in control.He taught, but so did another voice, and their words blurred together.I'm not bound to the ground, not when I can fly.I'm not under anyone's control; gods never die.





	TRENCH

**Author's Note:**

> I have a little 'tradition' I started a short while ago of listening to an album all the way through and writing a story influenced mostly by the sound, but sometimes by the words of the album's contents.  
> This is Trench's story, as told by my first listen to the whole album.  
> I'll ask you to kindly pardon any mistakes, as I stopped editing the document at the end of 'Leave The City.'

This is the time. This is what they always told me about. I feel it, and it’s strong, and I’m invincible.

It’s dead at my feet. I controlled its state of life--I caused it to cross into death. I am its god.

I know this power is something I never deserved, but now that I have it, I can’t give it up. I have become something greater than I could ever have dreamed in the years leading up to this moment.

Those who taught me are so far below me now that I could leave their bodies beside this one and feel no guilt whatsoever.

As I walk forward, its bones crunch beneath my beat-up sneakers. These shoes are the same that I’ve worn since I was in high school. That was when school still mattered. Some kids still go there, and they might wear sneakers like these. I don’t know if anyone still makes these. I grabbed them because they were my size and didn’t cost too much. It’s not like I cared.

I wish I’d picked better shoes now, but I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Boots or sneakers, it’s still rubber underneath my soles. It’s really nothing of consequence what holds them up as long as I can count on it, and I’ve been able to trust these ragged pieces of junk for years. Soon, I’ll be able to make them last forever.

I can’t feel the wind quite as harshly now that I have blood all over me. It’s starting to harden up and make me a second skin. It’s creasing in all the places that my limbs bend: elbows, wrists, fingers, all these joints. Maybe it’s less like skin and more like armor.

Here come these voices from all around. Every being who knew the thing I killed is coming to find it the way I left it. I don’t even turn around; going on to the path is more important.

Still, I imagine the fresh blood running down the face of the cliff, where I left it behind. I think the body’s probably going to fall off that edge eventually, probably when all those concerned beings crowd around and push it.

It’s so weak, still bound to the laws of the world. I started walking on the air sometime in the past, and since then, everything else has seemed like a joke of nature in comparison. I don’t even think my teachers learned to leave the ground. They told me that I was insane, that I was poisoning my mind. I don’t know how they could stop before reaching this point. They told me that killing it was all the power I needed--and maybe that act was powerful, but I know there’s so much more.

I have become a god, and now I will become the universe.

My feet touch ground again, and I see the path just a few feet away.

I hear it in my head again, and I know now that the path doesn’t matter anymore, because I just learned to skip it.

In a blink, I’m in a room with my teachers again. They look at me like they’re afraid to come near me.

“I did it,” I tell them. “Killed it.”

The nearest one--he’s always been the one who was more interested in me--looks down at my sneakers and says, “Well, you sure did, didn’t you?”

I smile in self-satisfaction. “I’ve become what you told me I could.”

“I didn’t mean it,” he says simply, and points to the shoes he seems so interested in, which are still the same.

“What are you talking about?”

I’m staring at the shoes now, and I see that blood is leaking through the fabric. From the inside. My socks are wet. Getting wetter. The shoes are filling.

“Where’s the blood coming from?”

The skin of blood I’ve been wearing starts to break apart and slither down my limbs as more leaks out, but from where?

“Well, you killed it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s dead. I’m a god. I did it.”

“Did you see who came to say goodbye?”

“Didn’t bother to check.”

He shrugs. “I’d tell you to check it out, but you’d die.”

“Gods can’t die.”

“Yeah, you’re right on that one.”

Half of my vision goes black. I feel sticky, thick liquid pouring down my cheek.

“They just got your eye,” he says casually.

“Who?”

“Who do you see?”

I pause. “What?”

“Gods are omniscient. You should know who attacked you, shouldn’t you?”

“That’s kind of hard when I can’t even see out of one eye.”

The rest of what I can see is gone in the next second. Whatever he says is after me, it just got my other eye, too.

“You’re lucky you can’t feel it,” he tells me. “It’s like you’re completely gone.”

My clothes are soaked, and drizzling onto the floor. I hear the occasional drips from slower flows, but the streams are constant and silent.

“You really have no idea what you killed, do you?”

“You told me to kill it, you showed it to me and told me to kill it!”

He’s too calm for this. Gods don’t bleed. Gods don’t die. Why isn’t he confused? Why isn’t he concerned for me?

“You kind of took it literally. I actually didn’t even know this was possible. Leave it to you to figure out a way to do something like this.”

I can’t breathe anymore, suddenly, and I can’t even make a sound. There’s nothing to use for either of those things. It’s like I don’t have lungs.

“I wondered how long that would take,” he sighed. “I give it ten seconds. Look, I’m sorry, but you took it too far. I just wish you wou--”

I can’t hear. There’s nothing left but the feel of blood, the smell of blood, the taste of blood.

But then there’s wind, and I’m suddenly aware of my body, of every missing chunk of my--this thing I’m living in, and the faint sensation of more being taken away. I’m long past the pain, numb to everything.

Gods can’t die.

With every inch I move closer to the edge, I find myself believing it less and less. I can’t see or hear, but I can tell there’s air beneath my back, more air every time I slip again. I can’t walk on it anymore. I can’t even crawl.

I find myself wondering why I had to feel what it felt, the thing I killed. And why did no one come for it to save it? Why is it being attacked when it’s already dead? Why am I in this alone, abandoned body?

I finally slip off the cliff and feel the air rush around what’s left of the vessel I’m in.

I try to skip over the feeling of a sneaker snagging on a rock and yanking itself off of my foot.

Gods can’t die.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!  
> Trench is an amazing album, and I'm incredibly happy to have been able to make art from art itself.  
> 


End file.
